Reports

During a routine inspection

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Southwell Medical Centre on 25 February 2015. Overall the practice is rated as good.

Specifically, we found the practice to be good for providing safe, well-led, effective, and responsive services. We found the practice was outstanding for providing caring services. It was also providing good services for all population groups.

Our key findings across all the areas we inspected were as follows;

Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns, and to report incidents and near misses. Information about safety was recorded, monitored, appropriately reviewed and addressed.

Risks to patients were assessed and well managed

Patients’ needs were assessed and care was planned and delivered following best practice guidance. Staff had received training appropriate to their roles and any further training needs had been identified and planned.

Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment.

Information about services and how to complain was available and easy to understand.

Patients said they found it easy to make an appointment with a named GP and that there was continuity of care, with urgent appointments available the same day.

The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.

There was a clear leadership structure and staff felt supported by management. The practice proactively sought feedback from staff and patients, which it acted on.

We saw areas of outstanding practice, including:

The practice provided outstanding support to patients receiving end of life care and their relatives and carers. Support following bereavement was also outstanding. We saw that GP's provided contact details to patients nearing the end of their life to ensure they had access to a GP who knew them out of hours to ensure continuity of care.

The practice had robust safeguarding procedures, particularly for children including well established strong links with other safeguarding agencies. They always attended child protection meetings in person.

The practice had identified that students did not access GP services well. To address this, the practice manager attended fresher’s week at the nearby university site to advise students how best to use the practice. The location of the university site was very isolated and the practice had identified that students could experience poor mental health as a result. They had therefore developed strong links with the mental health support team to offer help advice and early intervention.

The practice provided caring and responsive medical care to a respite home for children and young people with physical and learning disabilities. Including GP's working late to ensure the residents had access to care and treatment when needed.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP)

Chief Inspector of General Practice

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CQC Insight

These reports bring together existing national data from a range of indicators that allow us to identify and monitor changes in the quality of care outside of our inspections. The data within the reports do not constitute a judgement on performance, but inform our inspection teams. Our judgements on quality and safety continue to come only after inspection and we will not make judgements on data alone.

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Outstanding – the service is performing exceptionally well.

Good – the service is performing well and meeting our expectations.

Requires improvement – the service isn't performing as well as it should and we have told the service how it must improve.

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There's no need for the service to take further action. If this service has not had a CQC inspection since it registered with us, our judgement may be based on our assessment of declarations and evidence supplied by the service.

The service must make improvements.

At least one standard in this area was not being met when we inspected the service and we have taken enforcement action.